


White Gems of Pure Starlight

by likethenight



Series: My Heart Is An Empty Vessel [6]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Birthday Presents, F/M, Gen, Jewelry, M/M, Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 12:07:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29857830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likethenight/pseuds/likethenight
Summary: Thranduil thinks about the white gems that once belonged to his wife, and what he will do with them now he has an opportunity to regain them.
Relationships: Bard the Bowman/Thranduil, Sigrid (Hobbit Movies) & Thranduil (Tolkien), Thranduil/Thranduil's Wife
Series: My Heart Is An Empty Vessel [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1902442
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9





	White Gems of Pure Starlight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lemurious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemurious/gifts).



> This is a birthday fic for my thoroughly wonderful beta lemurious, who puts up with me bombarding her with fic at all hours and every opportunity! I appreciate it more than I can possibly put into words, but this is me having a go at doing so. I wanted to do something about the gems, which have recently reared their heads in Empty Vessel, and take a look at the relationship between Thranduil and his stepdaughter Sigrid, which I have been greatly enjoying as it's developed (Sigrid is absolutely my favourite character in this whole thing, I think), and all of a sudden, Himself showed up in the back of my head _talking in the first person_ , which he never does for me. I am still rather bewildered!
> 
> Anyway, HAPPY BIRTHDAY LEMURIOUS! I hope you have a suitably wonderful day! <333333333
> 
> This story takes place around chapters 87-95ish of [My Heart Is An Empty Vessel](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26197213) \- the suggestion as to how Thranduil might go about reclaiming the gems and honouring his wife's memory is made by Bard in chapter 87. 
> 
> Thranduil's wife Auriel appears as one of the main characters in the thoroughly canon-mangling sequel to Empty Vessel, [Break You But You'll Mend](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27419968), and her backstory as a jewel-smith and craftswoman (not to mention her true parentage) comes from two [beautiful](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26890615/chapters/65724106) [poems](https://lemurious.tumblr.com/post/643130730757668864/happy-valentines-day-nocompromise-noregrets-i) by lemurious, and lemurious also came up with the idea for how the gems had come to be in the Lonely Mountain. In Empty Vessel-'verse, Thranduil and Auriel adopted the orphaned Tauriel, who grew up with Legolas; and Auriel forged the white knives that Legolas carries in the movies - they were originally her own weapon of choice.

They were all I had to remember her by, or so I thought for the longest of times. The gems she had brought with her from Doriath, the last of her craft packed away into a wooden box that fitted between my hands. The necklace that was the last thing she made, the gems she had not had chance to forge into something beautiful before our home was destroyed and we had to flee. She put her craft away after that, declaring her smithing days done and past, after what her natural father had done. 

She kept them in her bureau, in our chambers in my father’s halls, tucked away safely with the rest of her jewellery, and every now and then she would take them out and look at them, their light suffusing her lovely face. _You could still make something of them, meleth-nín, to honour those we have lost_ , I would say, and she would always shake her head and swear that she would never again touch the tools of her craft, the unwanted heritage that had come down to her with her father’s blood.

It was a long time after we had come to live in the Greenwood that she brought them out for the last time. My parents were long dead and she and I ruled the Woodland Realm in their place. She would take them to the Lonely Mountain, she said, and ask the Dwarves to make something from them for her, to build a bridge between their people and ours. It had been many thousands of years since Doriath had been sacked and our King ambushed and murdered by the Dwarves of Nogrod, and she thought it was time we made overtures of peace. I was not convinced, but she would not hear of my objections and I loved her too much to stop her. Besides, in my heart of hearts I think that I thought that she was probably right.

So she took the box of gems and the necklace to Erebor, and left them with the Dwarves. She would return, she said, and discuss what was to be made from them. It was the first time I had seen her so happy to talk of jewel-smithing since our earliest days together in Menegroth, and I thought, I dared to hope, _perhaps this is a good thing, perhaps it will bring her back to the craft she so loved when she was young_. We had our son by then, and our adopted daughter, and I thought perhaps she might teach her craft to them, pass it on untainted by her father’s crimes now that so much time had elapsed.

But none of that came to pass.

Instead I brought back her white knives from the gates of Gundabad, all that could be saved before the Orcs overran us and drove us back, cutting me off from her fallen, broken body. There is no grave for her, no memory, save for the statue I placed at the western entrance to the forest, far away from anywhere I would walk so that I did not have to lay eyes upon her, for I could not bear to see.

I gave her knives to our son, when he was old enough to wield them, thinking it was only right for him to carry his mother’s protection with him, but I could not bear to think of her; the pain and the sorrow were still too near, and I froze my heart over instead. I hoped to retreat and recover, but I found that recovery was beyond me and so I hid for centuries behind my walls of ice, and in the process lost the others who were dear to me.

I went, eventually, to reclaim the gems and the necklace from the Mountain, but the Dwarven King demanded payment from me. No work had been done, and so I refused - and the box was snapped shut almost upon my fingers, the light emanating from the gems cut off, plunging me into darkness. And the gems were snatched from me, taken away, lost to me for ever.

Or so I thought.

And now after so long in the cold and the darkness, the unimaginable has happened, a miracle has somehow come to pass, and I find myself unfrozen, returned to life like a river in the springtime for which I was named. I find myself drawn into the centre of a new family and surrounded by love I had not looked for. And this new love has brought the necklace back to me, the last piece of her craft that I had thought was lost, upon which I had mistakenly placed more value than my son, and driven him away as a result. And from this love has come the suggestion that I should ask the Dwarves to fulfil her original intention and make something from the remaining gems, something that can honour her memory and serve for ever as an heirloom of our people.

I will do that, but also I will ask them to make a gift or two, for the love of this new family that has brought me back to life. One for my beloved, and one for his eldest daughter, who if all is right in the world will succeed him as ruler when the time comes. There are other gifts for the other children, other parts of her; another necklace for the little girl, and her forging tools for the boy, I think, for he has shown some talent at it, and they will find no further use among our people.

A gift fit for a future Queen, but a Queen who resolutely will not set herself above her people, is a hard challenge to meet, but I think I have the perfect idea. A fillet for her hair, delicate and subtle, a net that has caught the light of the stars within its filaments, to enclose the coronet of braids at the back of her head that I sometimes think is her only vanity. A challenge, too, for the Dwarven jewel-smiths, but I think they will rise to it, for they will not want to fail; and besides, this future Queen has charmed all she has encountered, and the Dwarves love her as much as her own people do, who have known her since the day she was born.

It is exquisite, when it is brought to me, a few days before her birthday in the early autumn, so lovely that for a moment I think, _surely they must have found it in the box of gems, surely only she could have made such a thing_ \- but no, it is Dwarven-made and resplendent in a beautiful velvet-lined wooden box as fine as anything ever made by the artisans of my own realm.

 _Ada,_ she says when I hand it to her, this girl who is barely more than a child and yet already almost prepared to ascend to the throne, and she opens the box and looks upon it, _it’s beautiful_ , and that is all I wanted or needed to hear. Those words in that dear voice, that spirit that is so like _hers_ , although they never met and no kinship binds them. They are all that I have needed, as are all of the members of this new, unexpected family that I have found in the aftermath of war and loss and tragedy.

I did not look for it; indeed I thought to spend the rest of my days in Arda cold and alone. But here I am, here _we are_ , and I feel as though this warmth could sustain me for the rest of my days.

 _I have found them, meleth-nín,_ I hear myself telling her, in the back of my mind, _I have found them, and you would love them as much as I do if you could only know them._ It is a sorrow too deep for words to me that she will never meet them, for even if I sail West to find her re-embodied from Mandos’ Halls, they will not be with me; they will be long gone by the time that day comes.

But for now I have them, and they sustain me, they all light my days as my beloved, their father, warms my nights, and together we are the closest of little families. And still greater joy they have brought to me, for they have engineered my reconciliation with my adopted daughter, the captain of my guard who long ago declared that she was going to call me _Adarhanar_ , uncle, and adopted us as thoroughly as we had adopted her. I might dare to hope that one day my son might return, too, and they have taught me how to change, how to grow, so that if he does return I might begin to earn his forgiveness, and begin again with him, too, the last remaining member of this family who still might come back to me.

 _Do you think she’d have liked it, Ada?_ asks my brave, clever stepdaughter, trying on the net of jewels, turning this way and that before the looking-glass, _do you think she’d have been pleased that you’ve given some of her gems to me?_ and I hear the true question behind her words, _do you think she would have liked me?_ to which of course the only answer is, _yes, melinettë-nín, she would have been delighted, and she would have loved you as her own._ And she wraps me up in a warm, joyous hug, and I hold her tight and safe in my embrace for as long as I can, this strong-willed, level-headed, miraculous girl who along with her father and siblings is helping me to reconsider all I ever thought I had learned about love. She is cherished daughter, esteemed adviser and valuable friend all in one and I do not know what I will do without her.

 _Should I come and find you, Auriel, meleth-nín, when they are gone? Will you be there for me to bring back to you the gems you loved so much? Will you be there to ease my grief at last?_ So many questions I have, and not a single answer to any of them. But I will leave them aside for now, for I do not wish to waste a single moment with my little family, whose lights burn so brightly but will not shine for nearly long enough. And I will honour the memory of my lost beloved, for as long as I am here, with the pure, white light of the stars in my stepdaughter’s hair.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Sindarin translations:**  
>  (source: ambar-eldaron.com's dictionary last updated October 2008):
> 
> meleth-nín: my love  
> ada: father (informal)  
> adarhanar: uncle (literally: father-brother; my own construction)  
> melinettë-nín: my dear girl
> 
> Thank you for reading! If you're enjoying the story, do feel free to leave a comment and let me know - long or short or a single emoji, every single one absolutely makes my day. :)
> 
> I am [nocompromise-noregrets](https://nocompromise-noregrets.tumblr.com) over on Tumblr, by the way, so if any of you would like to come and find me there I would love to see you.


End file.
